I’m not totally uncompetitive. It’s just that for some reason I never cared all that much whether I beat others or lost to them. This sentiment remained pretty much unchanged after I grew up. It doesn’t matter what field you’re talking about – beating somebody else just doesn’t do it for me. I’m much more interested in whether I reach the goals that I set for myself, so in this sense long-distance running is the perfect fit for a mindset like mine.
The quiet, melancholy music gradually gave shape to the undefined sadness enveloping his heart, as if countless microscopic bits of pollen adhered to an invisible being concealed in the air, ultimately revealing, slowly and silently it’s shape.
What a wonderful thing it is to find and be found by your 100% perfect other. It’s a miracle, a cosmic miracle.
It was as if he felt that the black symbols flowing from his brush onto the pure white paper could somehow lay bare the workings of his heart.
I do feel that I’ve managed to make something I could maybe call my own world... over time... little by little. And when I’m inside it, to some extent, I feel kind of relieved. But the very fact I felt I had to make such a world probably means that, I am a weak person, that I bruise easily, don’t you think? And in the eyes of society at large, that world of mine is a puny little thing.
If you can love someone with your whole heart, even one person, then there’s salvation in life.
Civilization is communication,” the doctor said. “That which is not expressed doesn’t exist.
Putting it into words will destroy any meaning.
As you may know, in this Town, memory is unreliable and uncertain. There are things we can remember and things we cannot remember.
He was dead tired, thanks to which, whatever emotions he might have had, simply came and went without gaining a foothold. The Rat began to relax and lay down his empty head on the mingled sounds of the waves and the deejay until sleep crept over him.
They tell us that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but I don’t believe that,′ he said. Then, a moment later, he added: ‘Oh, the fear is there, all right. It comes to us in many different forms, at different times, and overwhelms us. But the most frightening thing we can do at such times is to turn our backs on it, to close our eyes. For then we take the most precious thing inside us and surrender it to something else.
He calmed himself, shut his eyes, and fell asleep. The rear light of consciousness, like the last express train of the night, began to fade into the distance, gradually speeding up, growing smaller until it was, finally, sucked into the depths of night, where it disappeared. All that remained was the sound of the wind slipping through a stand of white birch trees.
Sara said she has feelings for me. He had no reason to doubt it. But there are countless things in the world for which affection is not enough. Life is long, and sometimes cruel. Sometimes victims are needed. Someone has to take on that role. And human bodies are fragile, easily damaged. Cut them, and they bleed.
The way I see it,” Menshiki said, “there’s a point in everybody’s life where they need a major transformation. And when that time comes you have to grab it by the tail. Grab it hard, and never let go.
Cause in Alphaville, you’re not allowed to have deep feelings. So there’s nothing like love. No contradictions, no irony. They do everything according to numerical formulas.” Kaoru wrinkles her brow. “‘Irony’?” “Irony means taking an objective or inverted view of oneself or of someone belonging to oneself and discovering oddness in that.
I might have been afraid that if I really loved someone and needed her, one day she might suddenly disappear without a word, and I’d be left all alone.
Darkness had spread over my skin like ink.
People do change. And no matter how close we once were, and how much we opened up to each other, maybe neither if us know anything substantial about the other.
Life has gotten too much. I have no problem with dying as I am. I don’t have the energy to go out and find a method to help me take my life. But quietly accepting death, that I can handle.
It was nothing but a hole, a mouth open wide. You could lean over the edge and peer down to see nothing. All I knew about the well was its frightening depth. It was deep beyond measuring, and crammed full of darkness, as if all the world’s darkness had been boiled down to their ultimate density.